what is ours

Billowing in this mountain valley, mist and clouds linger three days. So too puddles, mud, and silence.

Alone with another; another alone

No use fretting over gold, beauty or fame;  

Nurturing these, how can we calm  

Our fluttering heart?  

Non attachment brings deep truth,  

And a truthful nature brings immortality.  

Empty your heart,  

Sit quietly on a mat.  

In meditation we become one with All;  

Tao billows like the vapors 

In a mountain valley,  

And its supernatural power 

Wafts into us.   

- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960) 

Are we not open windows through which light passes uncontrolled? And does not shadow fall across lintel? Add perception, add wonder, add noise washing over the noiseless.

Jesus said:
‘I still have many things to say to you
but they would be too much for you now.
But when the Spirit of truth comes
he will lead you to the complete truth,
since he will not be speaking as from himself
but will say only what he has learnt;
and he will tell you of the things to come.
He will glorify me,
since all he tells you
will be taken from what is mine.
Everything the Father has is mine;
that is why I said:
"All he tells you
will be taken from what is mine.’'
(--John 16:12-15, Gospel for Feast of The Most Holy Trinity)

The words "what is mine" resound. Can we say that "what is" is ours? Can we imaging this to be true at the same time as saying that, while mine, I do not own it, do not possess it, do not control it?

Every Riven Thing  

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he's made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why  

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he's made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where  

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he's made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,  

God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made. 

(Poem by Christian Wiman, c. 2010)

One broken into two, torn apart into three. It is Trinity Sunday.

Definition: rive, v. rived, riv·en (rvn) also rived, riv·ing, rivesv.tr. 

1. To rend or tear apart. 

2. To break into pieces, as by a blow; cleave or split asunder.

3. To break or distress (the spirit, for example).
v.intr.To be or become split.

---

[Middle English riven, from Old Norse rfa.]

(The Free Dictionary) 

We pray, we sit,  for all the riven.

That we experience the "what is" that is our true belonging.

That we experience.

What is.

Ours.

With what is made.

A longing/proposal for Idiorrhythmic Integrality

A time to read. And it is time. 

With the failure of the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Prosperity Churches, the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Executive Branch, the Banks, the Insurance Companies, the News Media, a vast number of Corporations, the Colleges and Universities more interested in endowments and self-preservation over essential commitment to knowledge-learning-wisdom, and, finally, Primary & Secondary Schools, Prisons, and Unions, the Police Forces, the Military, and the whole National Security State -- we have a big problem: Who, if anyone, can be trusted?

"The bulk of our knowledge -- perhaps virtually all of it -- depends on others in various ways," writes political philosopher Russell Hardin. "We take most knowledge on authority from others who presumably are in a position to know it." 

(from, Twilight of the Elites, America After Meritocracy, by Christopher Hayes, c.2012, p.106)

 Then later:

When our most central institutions are no longer trusted, we each take refuge in smaller, balkanized epistemic encampments, aided by the unprecedented information technology at our disposal. As some of these encampments build higher and higher fences, walling themselves off from science and empiricism, we approach a terrifying prospect: a society that may no longer be capable of reaching the kind of basic agreement necessary for social progress. (Hayes, p.107)

Finally:

I've seen firsthand that you can't trust consensus, because consensus can be horribly and violently wrong. You can't trust those people with the greatest proximity to the issue in question, because proximity can blind them as much if not more than distance. And you certainly cannot simply assume good faith, particularly from our pillar institutions and the powerful elites who run them.
The old methods of figuring out the world have failed us. So we turn to the new, and find they can do everything imaginable except restore to us the faith we lost. (Hayes, p.125) 

I'd like to think there is somewhere out there a viable, trustworthy, caring, effective, knowledgable resource capable of penetrating the dense wall of doubt and bad experience impeding our next steps toward sane and thoughtful living in the world. But I don't see it. Not yet.

Intelligence, thinking and reasoning in the old fashioned way, (not the secret societies snooping and surveilling our every thought and move), would be nice.

Intuition, the seeing beyond seeing, would help.

Instinct, trusting what we actually feel about persons, institutions, and situations -- would work.

Imagination, the willingness to follow a flight of fancy and formulation of fecund invitation into creative expression -- would sprinkle glory on our paths.

Interpretation and Inventiveness -- would round out our willingness to look deeply, think widely, question strongly, and care intensely.

Idiorrhythmic Integrality -- will bring us home.

Definition of IDIORRHYTHMIC 

Eastern Church : self-regulating —used of (1) monks that live separately, hold property, work individually in supporting themselves, and though members of a monastery supervised by an elected council are not under direct daily supervision or (2) of monasteries so organized.  

Origin of IDIORRHYTHMIC 

LGk idiorrhythmos (fr. Gk idio- + rhythmos measured motion, measure, proportion) + E -ic — more at rhythm 

 This word doesn't usually appear in our free dictionary, but the definition from our premium Unabridged Dictionary is offered here on a limited basis. Note that some information is displayed differently in the Unabridged.   

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiorrhythmic

I agree, that's a lot of "I's":
(Intelligence, Intuition, Instinct, Imagination, Interpretation, Inventiveness, Idiorrhythmic Integrality)

We need to contemplate and cultivate self-regulation. We need to contemplate and cultivate the whole (i.e. integrality) and not remain addicted to the partial.

Things are dire.

There is an approaching boundary beyond which no returning is possible. It is guarded by fear and agents of fear. It is ruled by suspicion, bullets, mistrust, and sneering privilage. Be wary of approaching and crossing that boundary.

Perhaps we already have, as a society, as a culture, as a country, as a civilization.

Too bad!

But here's the thing: As an individual, as a person with remaining wits and pluck and vim and keen sense of absurdity -- you are still in the clear.

Wander that freedom.

Don't cross over into that desperate terrain of deadened heart and mind.

Stay alert and vital.

Trust your-Self the It-self.

What we used to think of as "God"--out there and away-- is not out there and away. The vibrant source of integrity, self-proportion, and trusted-being, is you in concert with all that comprises and constitutes your being-at-all, especially your being-in-the-world.

Let's come home.

Let's not be them.

Let's be us. All of us within and without a them conceived in a dualistic separating mind. Perhaps, better thought, no-us/no-them, only this, being as it is, itself. 

Everything belongs to itself.

Loving.

And free.

Maieutic moment

Birthing Buddha.

Breathe.

What a sweet child!

Touch earth.

(Greek maieutikos, from maieuesthai, to act as midwife)

sealing the tomb

In thinking about encounter, we might have to face such words as written by novelist David Zindell:

He hated himself. All women and men, of course, being human beings find some part of their all-too-human selves to hate. But he took this hatred further; he made an art of hating himself. His pride, his anger, his aloofness from the sufferings of his fellow man - he hated these weaknesses just as he hated his lack of imagination and failure to prove the Hypothesis. And more, he hated himself merely for having weaknesses of any sort. I watched him place his white, blistered lips above the rim of his mug and blow on his coffee, and it occurred to me that he hated being human. He, that broody, inward-looking man who had so often ventured down the dark icy glidderies of his soul, had discovered that we define our humanity - our very selves - more by our weaknesses than by our strengths. And there was the trap which held him like the enclosing freeze of the winter sea: He loved being human as much as he hated it because it was the only thing he knew how to be. The greater Soli, the Soli who might someday emerge from the flawed, bitter, old Soli if only he would relinquish his icy grip upon himself, this Soli he feared (and therefore hated) above all things. And he knew all this. He saw himself more clearly than I ever could through my naive cetic's eyes. It was this self-knowledge and self-vision which sealed the tomb of his self-hatred. If he could really see the spiral of hate and fear binding him, shouldn't he be able to break free? No, he could not. He was only human, after all, wonderfully, tragically human. Human beings, he had tried to tell himself for three lifetimes, must accept their own humanity. 

(p.418, in Neverness, A Novel, by David Zindell)

All of it.

Encountering.

good words

Pope Francis speaks about a culture of encounter -- (encounter, i.e. "unexpectedly experience or be faced with {something difficult or hostile}: an unexpected or casual meeting with someone or something.")    (definition from apple dictionary)

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”   

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/22/pope_at_mass:_culture_of_encounter_is_the_foundation_of_peace/en1-694445

His words are a good place to meet.

uncertainty of this-and-that

Rain falls opening seeds.

The hidden unmanifest comes to surface, buds, breaks open, flowers.

Leaf brings green. Petals hue color spectrum. Inner becomes outer. Spring!

We read Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) at practice, on Nothingness and God. Centrifugal movement from God once considered evil. Centripetal movement toward God once considered good.

Spring moves outward. Autumn moves inward. The manifestation becomes the un-manifestation. Coming out is going in. We are the exchange between what has been called good and evil, God and Satan.

It is the exchange.

The movement between desiring what is good in the midst of what is evil.

The movement toward God is passing glance at what moves from God.

There is only God.

And the movement to and from is what the mind imagines it is doing as it follows urge and impulse, thought and intuition, swirling the seasons marked by time and history.

Nothing changes.

And this movement from one to other, back to one, off to other -- is the exchange of existence caught between the uncertainty of this-and-that.

Christ is accompanying emergence in our pilgrimage between this and that. Christ is the awareness of compassionate presence traversing the timeline narrative and historical evidence wherein one thing follows and replaces another thing in the stretch of inner becoming outer.

But soon enough, outer falls away -- leaves fall to earth, petals tumble to ground -- and everything begins to deteriorate and transform into source of hibernation hidden within itself.

Winter and summer harmonize. Autumn and spring articulate. The enormous cosmos pulsates heartbeat of emergence and convergence.

This morning it rains. Cats climb and knock over anything teetering.

This 53rd day after will reveal narrative of hematological neoplasms during falling rain.

So it is May rain will June explain.

Is this What-Is heard

Staying with the theme, water flows down Ragged Mountain as Christ flows through this apparent existence -- here, and at same time, everywhere passing through.

As I come to recognize both particularity and peculiarity, I sense a curious possibility, namely, everything is changing, nothing remains the same -- while, throughout, the originating élan vital moving all-which-is remains the same, or perhaps, constant, perduring, that is, moving through, lasting through.

                                            

This perduring Christ, this movement of change with its constant invitation to choose to enter its stream watering life enroute, neutrino-like and phoneme-full, is Sruti perduring Smriti.*

For Christians, whatever form their belief takes, "Christ" is the word-concept used in their formulation. And yet, "Christ" is not a last name, not a singular persona, not an objective being, not a composite systematic theology for which the sole cultural response is "amen, thank you Jesus!"

This Sruti, this perdurance, this Christ -- is the sound of what is being said, as it is being said, with attentive, listening, watchful, presencing awareness.

To choose, to enter the course of action, is to release oneself into the diverse difference of what is appearing to be, an infinite becoming seemingly situating itself ephemerally in what we call true here and now.

Everybody hurts, nothing lasts, all shall be well. And even these words, the attempt to concretize the evanescent, these too shall pass.

What are we left with?

If you find an answer to that question, put it down, let it, too, go.

It is all meant to go.

So, throughout, comes love!

                  

* The Sruti and the Smriti are the two authoritative sources of Hinduism. 

Differences between Sruti and the Smriti: 

Sruti literally means what is heard, and Smriti means what is remembered. 

Sruti is revelation and Smriti is tradition. 

Sruti is direct experience. Great Rishis heard the eternal truths of religion and left a record of them for the benefit of posterity. Smriti is a recollection of that experience. 

Sruti is eternal and Smriti is man-made.Sruti is primary authority and the Smriti is secondary.Sruti is the final authority. If there is anything in a Smriti which contradicts the Sruti, the Smriti is to be rejected.

Sruti commands nothing. It gives direction only. Smriti commands and give punishments if not followed in the form of prayachits. 

Sruti never becomes obsolete but a part of Smriti may become obsolete and require modification or amendment. 

Sruti is never changing and thus permanent. Smriti followed at a given time has necessary changes as required. Smriti is thus dynamic in nature.

Srutis are the four Vedas, Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva Vedas and 108 Upanishads. Manu, Parasara, Yajnavalkya, Gautama, Harita, Yama, Visnu, Sankha, Likhita, Brhaspati, Daksa, Angiras, Pracetas, Samvarta, Acanas, Atri, Apastamba and Satatapa are the eighteen sages who mastered the Vedas with their superhuman power and derived the Smrtis from them. Their works are known after them like Manusmrti, Yajnavalkya-smrti, Parasara-Smrti and so on, and they contain all that we need to know about all the dharmas to be adhered to.  

:http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090505122542AA8IHwO

                                 

There is something about "this."

" I say this because the world as we know it is passing away.” (1Cor7:31, Universalis)

"For this world in its present form is passing away. " (1Cor7:31, NIV)

You must remember this. 

"Truth," the Zen Master said, is "just like this."

Collation and recollection helps.

caesura

 Sitting in loft of cabin, window to right of me, chapel/zendo down to left.

Woman comes in. Lights incense stick. Sits. She sits with new knowledge. A new message. A hermeneutic specific to her. An interpretation only she can decipher. A boundary marker has been identified.

When Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you,” he was newly present to the eyes and ears of those in the room. Something was being communicated that had not been understood before.

Some of us live in the before, some in the after.

And then there are those who live in the during.

Jesus is this during.

He is that comma, between the phrases.

The before people wait for something. The after people are full of certainty.

I prefer to dwell with what is during, with the between, the unknown name sounding Neti-Neti: not-this/not-that. 

It is, I'm willing to admit, a curious place.

Raimon Panikkar died in August, 2010. This is from his website under "Christophany":

- Christophany “suggests that the encounter with Christ can not be reduced to a mere doctrinal or intellectual approach”; it wants to elaborate a reflection on Christ and the human being with clear reference to the Trinity: “The logos is also the Logos of God, but the Logos is not “all” of the Trinity, and the Spirit, although it may be inseparable from the living Christ, is not subordinate to the Logos”. The Christo-phany does not take anything away from the Christo-logy, but shows itself opened to the reality of the Spirit.  

- This contemplative, mystic attitude situates christophany in a more receptive posture, in contrast to the more aggressive search on the part of reason.  

- This notion of Christ must include both the figure from the historic past as well as the present reality. Panikkar does not dispense with the historic Jesus, but Christ is not reduced to him (“Christ does not belong only to the past”). Christophany is a reflection opened to the Christian scriptures, but is in dialogue with the other religions; opened to dialogue with the past (even the pre-Christian) and with the present (even the non-Christian) and in particular the contemporary scientific mentality.  

- Christophany, therefore, does not exclude a priori any epiphany of the sacred or the divine when searching for an integration of the figure of Christ in a more spacious cosmovision.”  

 http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-christophany.html

During, and between, a caesura, a cutting, a decision, a choice.

No intellectual conclusion, no emotional embrace, no rote formulaic utterance.

Nothing excluded; wholeness healed.

And just as suddenly, phrases from childhood Brooklyn streets return to chastise:

Stai Zitto!  

Silenzio!

Receive... yourself... the holy. One breath after the other!

The words of John need new hermeneutic.

‘Receive the Holy Spirit.
For those whose sins you forgive,
they are forgiven;
for those whose sins you retain,
they are retained.’ --John 20:19-23

He, Hermes, god of transitions and boundaries, alludes, is pointing out the emergent freedom with each one. This freedom says: You -- you -- are now free to choose the world you wish to live in. No longer are you pawn of destiny and fate, whim of gods or godhead, slave of conditioning or programming, no longer province of priest or imam, not puppet of passions or thought.

If you choose, there is a world of compassion and forgiveness. If you choose another direction, there is a world of cynicism and hostility. The holy, the breath of creative becoming intimacy, is emergent within you and all beings.

No need to justify.

Choose.

From explanation to embodiment:

Breath...partner to vibration...allowing sound...becoming word...moving with spirit.

                  

Breathe...connect...listen...become intimate...be free.

Even with words

Pentecost.

I would like to say something about God.

But there is nothing to be said about God.

God is the saying.

The saying itself.

"About" which here is nothing.

Hence, silence.

Even with words.

Silence.

Tomorrow, fifty-first.

Saturday morning recollection

In the cowshed there's a basket on my bicycle over front tire. It carried home two small pizzas from ride to town the day it arrived. I am again in Brooklyn's 20th Avenue Met's Food Market, my Saturday schoolboy job, carrying boxes of groceries on delivery bike cycling this two-wheeled Mack truck to row house 2nd floor walkup on 67th Street down from synagogue diagonally across schoolyard. I am happy with 25 cent tip and empty oversized basket riding back. I will buy an egg cream from Archie's soda fountain on corner of 69th Street and scan across room new comic books.

But that, as they say, was long ago.

poetically embodying origin

What we recognize outside us as something judged inadequate or insufficient is the mirroring of an interior block inhibiting the passing through us or our passing through what might be called 'reality' or existence-as-itself.

As form is emptiness, as emptiness is form, it is the movement of each through each, the passage itself, that exemplifies impermanence and no-self.

What we are is the betweening movement of existence seeking itself becoming itself in an infinite equation of possibility formulating, situating, and transcending its-very-own on its way elsewhere.

We're seldom here because 'here' is an ongoing exchange between there and then with where and when.

And so, are we ever at home?

Home -- when experienced as this unfolding revelation of manifesting arrivals through which we explore energies vibrating with our names and particular histories -- is where the art is.

The eternal and infinite particularity of creative interchange with whatever is, wherever it is, and however it appears -- this is our holy project of encounter with what-is-called-God.

And so it is.

And so we are.

And so it is as we are passing through it all on its way poetically embodying origin.

We are story being written

I tumble.

In this story.

I am.

Being written.

With brook, with fog, with dew, with all within, without, and through. 

Returning with earth, walking with Rokpa

A friend writes from Liberty, Maine. He sends Richard Rohr.

"How we do anything is finally how we do everything. (Rohr)

No explanation, embodiment

Wind blows prayers from prayer-flags over sprig-green field,

Cosmos, intelligent beyond knowing, finds solace in thoughtfulness of remembrance.

The language of cemeteries is stone silence.

Meet me there.

Wordless.

In the woods on the mountain

Spring comes and dogs walk with man and woman on zig zagging trails.

You see, everything is between what it has been and what it will be. 

We are the movement of transforming emptiness as it becomes the next form moving through the between into new emptiness entering form again on its way through between-time morphing another appearance.

So lovely, light, and steep.

So far we've gone, and so asleep.

Would that we soon awake!

He watches the flowers and birds outside

He said his name was Lawrence.

That's all he remembered.

That's enough, don't you agree?

Do you remember your name?

Write it down.

Lose the paper.

Who put sleeping powder in the eggs?

At Sunday morning hospitality a bunch of sleepy animals.

A distribution of provisions from breakfast plate wakes up the room.

And if the barn were to give itself to living quarters, who would take the lower level? 

Guests who feed the animals get first choice!

No replacing, no restricting: where religion next resides

All that is needed is a name.

No, not a name. 

A gaze.

One without nothing within.

Saturday morning

Passing through.

Leben ohne warum

If I ask why, I am on the outside.

There is no why if we are on the inside.

One with.

Way home

Host of God.

Is that it?

What we are?

Final class, ethics

Each speaks own mind.

Upon missing by 30 seconds...

...the comments (closed) for:

OP-ED Columnist, RELIGION BEYOND THE RIGHT, by Frank BruniPublished: May 6, 2013, The New York Times 

Excerpt:As the Boy Scouts of America reassesses its ban on gay scouts and leaders, we’re hearing a lot about the organization’s need to remain sensitive to people whose religions condemn homosexual behavior. Their morals must be properly respected, their God aptly revered.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/opinion/bruni-religion-beyond-the-right.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Too-late comment:
It's not about being gay.

 It's about being able to tell people they are wrong, perverse, outsiders, and illegitimate in the eyes of a God closely held and guarded by the condemnation squad.

Let's face it -- there's a new movement to purify others according to the standards of the purifiers. Institutions, churches, clubs, schools, the Senate and House of Representatives --  all have a purity & condemnation agenda that is not only annoying, but frightening.

Today's gay is tomorrow's non-fundamentalist religious follower, is next week's member of the Democratic Party, is next month's non-Caucasian, is next year's non-millionaire.

May the god of heterodox unions and humans have mercy on we the non-purists and non-condemnatory! Amen! Or: Hey-humanity!

I'll have the nothing special

Winnie dies. The sign of the unicorn is no longer readable. Nothing special.

Everything slows. Finish reading penultimate papers for ethics course. Final class Wednesday night.

Brain stalls. Time comes round to circumferential swirl. Nothing stretches. Pinpoint.

Maybe Christ is metaphor for emerging engagement with evolving experience. We live. We die. We return. Eternally recurring.

It doesn't matter. Not any of it. There's this...collapse.

Meanwhile, ordinary.

Nothing special.

Thanks Winnie!

As, In The Upper Room, Ballet for Chamber Ensemble, by Philip Glass, plays

Sunday morning , cat saunters into room. Sun daze early on winter-beaten mountainside.

The overwhelming variegation of people! Watching New York Times short videos -- seltzer man, poets in unexpected places, architecture of Bowery, fashion hats in Manhattan, street duds in Bronx, biker club in Queensboro.

This mind attending has slowed. Either it empties out by dint of early dementia or burrows into emptiness with late awareness.

Either way, it recognizes complaints of body, underground subway system groaning wheels as curving rails lift passage of millions of neurons to other places. It's a big unknown territory -- the territory of dark intelligence, dark knowing that never sees outer day, relegated to loam and root-systems of psyche's sparking synapses sending syncopating sorrow and solace through (now) violin strains of Going Home.

I don't live in New York City --- not for a long stretch of years -- but I did, once, turning keys to locks in Brooklyn and Bronx, visiting foreign lands of Staten Island, Manhattan, and Queens, as well as extra-terrestrial New Jersey address for the senseless span of heart's rambling pilgrimage.

I found home with zafu and zabuton in solitary practice a hermit's passing along village sidewalks and rural roads now in Maine these thirty two years.

My mind is not right. It belongs to a mysterious conclave of perennial, perpetual inquiry into language and symbol, vibrating truth and indecorous lies. But now, blessed relief, without feeling the urge to judge, need to justify, or purpose of explanation -- a coursing stream of attention-specific-reordering.

Everything is itself.

No more.

No less.

All...

Itself.

Nowhere to be found!

Screen

Peering through.

Joan will be leaving soon

Elderly friends spoke about the poem. About "alone."

They had much to say.

ALONE
"When I'm alone"—the words tripped off his tongue
As though to be alone were nothing strange.
"When I was young," he said; "when I was young..." 

I thought of age, and loneliness, and change.
I thought how strange we grow when we're alone,
And how unlike the selves that meet and talk,
And blow the candles out, and say good night. 

Alone... The word is life endured and known.
It is the stillness where our spirits walk
And all but inmost faith is overthrown.

(Poem by Siegfried Sassoon, 1886-1957)

All but...

Say goodnight!

May flowers

In Montpelier Vermont, at the end of the street where a fellow I know lives, police detonate a suspicious-looking box found on a sidewalk near a bank.

It contained, they discovered after the blast, home-school materials.

It is Thursday night in early May.

And we are a troubled people.

You?

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote the short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"in 1973.

It needs reading.

One commentator wrote:

The main point, I think, is slightly hidden near the end. As the narrator describes the people who decline the bargain, she mentions the place to which these people go. It is a better place than Omelas; she says, almost in passing, "I cannot describe it at all." 

Recall -- and this is the thing that would be easy to miss -- that this same narrator just spent the beginning of the story describing a city of perfect happiness to us. And she did it very well. She did not introduce the tragedy, the price, the child, until later on. And yet here she is, now, saying that she cannot describe this place that is better than Omelas, at all. One would have thought that the better place would simply be like Omelas, minus the hidden room, minus the tormented child. But the narrator could have described that; in fact, she did. So the place to which the decliners go must be some other sort of place, entirely. 

The point here is very deep. I think the idea of the story is that the narrator cannot violate the logic of human happiness, which requires a price, a flip-side. Our very conception of happiness, perhaps, has built into it a notion of the impossibility of perfection. This being the case, the fact that there must be a price of some sort -- not so dramatic or singular as the price of a tormented child in a locked room, but a price none the less -- seems inescapable. The place where the people who decline the bargain of Omelas go must therefore be a place where something other than happiness reigns; a place where some other inconceivable concept applies.                 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/01/25/688925/-About-That-Kid-in-Omelas#

The inconceivable concept other than happiness -- interests me.

You?

Sitting

New season returning to chapel/zendo.

Ragged Mountain, Haiku

Late afternoon yurt
resting inside sound of brook
Buds today open

Coming round

Back in the cabin, repaired, painted, and cleaned, for Sunday Evening Practice. Then, afterwards, compline.

The question arises, again: remain a hermit? or, throw hat in ring for full time position?

Searching out "no" answers. None forthcoming. Will have to take another tack.

The question arises: Where do you want to die?

That answer is easy: nowhere.

Then, just do
what I am
doing.

Only moreso.

Feeling lucky?

The are no second chances. There is only the first chance repeated.
Until we take it. And that's no chance at all.

You inspire me

Drones kill the way madmen kill. Without shame.

I ask my government to return to sanity.

It is a shame to kill so many innocents.

I will no longer use drones, albeit metaphoric drones.

Let this be an inspiration.

Embrace this, be sane!

Balance returns

Back to Thursday conversation 20/20/20. Equal triadic hour of sitting silence, collation, & recollection. Tonight some Edwina Gateley, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, then Richard Rohr.
Kindly companionship, a new beginning!

That's all for me

"The universe is a communion of subjects,
not a collection of objects."
--Thomas Berry

The next words are yours

The young boys fell to bomb blast;
One was 8 years old -- He died.
One was 19. He thinks about
the other boy, the one he killed
with a bomb.
Both boys would have preferred
inattention.
On a sunny day in Boston,
runners crossing finish line,
where we are right there, there
where nothing else is,
beginning the world again --
asking: Who sees what is
taking place, sees what is
the origin of what is to come?

dwelling wise

Earth, today, is home.

no such thing

if i want to remain unknown and out of sight . . .

if i wish to be unknowing and lost in seeing . . .

there is one thing

i can do

no(such)thing

What if: "there" is nothing else? If so, what is it to be "Da-sein," i.e. "there-being?"

It might be an understandable thing. As dementia arrives at front door, caring about sanity and appearance leaves by back porch. It seems likely there's nothing to pack. It all drops to floor and stays there in a heap.

The momentum of delusion and fastidious righteous ignorance arrives at front doors in every neighborhood.

I recuse myself and become recluse.

The silence within is either lucky happenstance or ominous prelude. Either way, I don't much care. I don't care about almost anything having to do with anything else.

How come? I wonder!

I think it is because the silence hints there is nothing else.

Thus, I care for nothing else.

Only silence.

Solitude.

And stillness.

There...